If youd like youre free to borrow one. We have most of the popular titles.
Oh, you rent videos? Asakawa ran his gaze casually over the titles of the videos covering the wall. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Friday the 13th. All popular American films, mostly science fiction. A lot of new releases, too. Probably the cabins were mostly used by groups of young people. There was nothing that grabbed him. Besides, Asakawa had ostensibly come here to work.
Im afraid Ive brought work with me. Asakawa picked up his portable word processor from where hed placed it on the floor and showed the manager. Seeing it, the manager seemed to understand why he was staying here alone.
So, there are dishes and everything? Asakawa said, just to make sure.
Yes. Use anything you like.
The only thing Asakawa needed to use, though, was a kettle to boil water for his cup o noodles. He took the sheets and his room key from the manager, who told him how to find B-4 and then said, with odd formality, Please, make yourself at home.
Before touching the knob Asakawa put on his rubber gloves. Hed brought them to give him peace of mind, as a charm to ward off the unknown virus.
He opened the door and flipped on the light switch in the entry hall. A hundred-watt bulb lit a spacious living room. Papered walls, carpet, four-person sofa, television, dinette set: everything was new, everything was functionally arranged. Asakawa took off his shoes and went in. There was a balcony on one edge of the living room and small Japanese-style rooms on the ground and first floors. It was a little luxurious for a single guest, after all. He drew the lace curtains and opened the sliding glass door to allow the night air in. The room was perfectly clean, as if to betray his expectations. It suddenly occurred to him that he might go home clueless.
He went into the Japanese-style room off the living room and checked the closet. Nothing. He took off his shirt and slacks and changed into a sweatshirt and sweatpants, hanging his street clothes in the closet. Next he went upstairs and turned on the light in the Japanese-style room. Im acting like a child, he thought wryly. Before hed realized it hed turned on every single light in the place.
With everything sufficiently illuminated, he now opened the bathroom door, gently. He checked inside first, and left the door slightly ajar while he was inside. It reminded him of his fearrituals as a child, when he was too scared to go to the bathroom alone on summer nights. He used to leave the door open a crack and have his dad stand watch outside. A neat shower room stood behind a pane of frosted glass. There wasnt even a hint of steam, and the area outside the tub and the tub itself were both dry as a bone. It must have been some time since anybody had stayed here. He went to take off his rubber gloves; they stuck to his sweaty hands. The cool highlands breeze blew into the room, disturbing the curtains.
Asakawa filled a glass with ice from the freezer and poured it half full of the whiskey he had bought. He was about to top it off with tap water, but then hesitated. Turning off the tap he persuaded himself that hed really rather have it straight, on the rocks. He didnt have the courage to put anything from this room into his mouth. Hed been careless enough to use ice cubes from the freezer, but he was under the impression that micro-organisms didnt like extreme heat or cold.
He sank back deep into the sofa and turned on the TV. Singing filled the room: some new pop idol. A Tokyo station was showing the same program right about now. He changed channels. He didnt really intend to watch anything, though, so he adjusted the volume to a suitable level and then opened his bag. He took out a video camera and placed it on the table. If anything strange happened, he wanted to catch it all on tape. He sipped a mouthful of whiskey. It was only a little, but it strengthened up his courage. Asakawa went over in his head again everything he knew. If he couldnt find a clue here tonight then the article he was trying to write would be dead in the water. But on the other hand, maybe it was better that way. If not finding a clue meant not picking up the virus, well after all, he had a wife and child to think about. He didnt want to die, not in some weird way. He propped his feet up on the table.
So, what are you waiting for? he asked himself. Arent you afraid? Heyshouldnt you be afraid? The angel of death might be coming to get you.
His gaze darted around the room nervously. Asakawa couldnt fix his eyes on any one point on the wall. He had the feeling that if he did so, his fears would begin to take physical form while he watched.
A chill wind blew in from outside, stronger than before. He closed the window and as he went to draw the curtains he happened to glance at the darkness outside. The roof of B-5 was directly in front of him, and in its shadow the darkness was even deeper. There had been lots of people on the tennis courts and in the restaurant. But here Asakawa was alone. He shut the curtains and looked at his watch. 8:56. He hadnt even been in this room for thirty minutes. It easily could have been an hour or more, he felt. But just being here wasnt dangerous in and of itself. He tried to believe that, to calm himself down. After all, how many people must have stayed in B-4 in the six months since these cabins were built? It wasnt like all of them had died under mysterious circumstances. Only those four, according to his research. Maybe if he dug deeper hed find more, but at the moment that appeared to be all. Thus, simply being here wasnt the problem. The problem was what theyd done here.
So, what did they do here?
Asakawa then subtly rephrased the question. What could they have done here?
Hed found nothing resembling a cluenot in the bathroom, not in the bath, not in the closet, not in the fridge. Even assuming there had been something, the manager would have disposed of it when he cleaned the place. Which meant that, instead of sitting here drinking whiskey, he should be talking to the manager. That would be quicker.
Hed drained his first glass; he made his second a little smaller. He couldnt afford to get drunk. He put a lot of ice in it, and this time he cut it with tap water. His sense of danger must have been numbed a little. He suddenly felt foolish: stealing time from work, coming all the way up here. He took off his glasses, washed his face, then looked at his reflection in the mirror. It was the face of a sick man. Maybe hed already caught the virus. He gulped down the whiskey-and-water hed just made and fixed himself another.
Returning from the dining room, Asakawa noticed a notebook on the shelf beneath the telephone stand. The cover said Memories. He leafed through a few pages.
Saturday, April 7
Nonko will never forget this day. Why? Thats a s-e-c-r-e-t. Yuichi is wonderful. Hee-hee!
NONKO
Inns, B&Bs, and the like often had notebooks like this in the rooms, so that guests could write down their memories and impressions. On the next page was a crude drawing of mommy and daddy. Must have been a family trip. It was dated April 14thalso a Saturday, naturally.
Daddys fat, Mommys fat, So Im fat too. Aprul 14nth
Asakawa kept turning pages. He could feel some sort of force urging him to open the pages at the end of the book, but he kept going through them in order. He was afraid that if he messed up the chronology he might miss something.
Asakawa kept turning pages. He could feel some sort of force urging him to open the pages at the end of the book, but he kept going through them in order. He was afraid that if he messed up the chronology he might miss something.
He couldnt say for sure, since there were probably a lot of guests who didnt write anything, but it seemed like there were only people here on Saturdays until summer started. After that the time between each entry shrank. By the end of August there was a steady stream of entries lamenting the end of summer.
Sunday, August 20
Another summer vacation come and gone. And it sucked. Somebody help me! Rescue poor little me! I have a motorbike, 400cc. Im pretty good-looking.
A bargain!
A.Y.
This guy looked like hed decided the guest book was a means to advertise himself, maybe find a pen-pal. It looked like a lot of people had the same ideas about the place. When couples stayed here, their entries showed it, while when single people stayed, they wrote about how much they wanted a companion.
Still, it made for interesting reading. Presently his watch showed nine oclock.
Then he turned the page:
Thursday, August 30
Ulp! Consider yourself warned: youd better not see it unless youve got the guts. Youll be sorry you did. (Evil laughter.)
S. I.
That was all there was to the message. August 30th was the morning after the four had stayed here. The initials S.I. would stand for Shuichi Iwata. His entry was different from all the rest. What did it mean? Youd better not see it. What in the world was it? Asakawa closed the guest book and looked at it from the side. There was a slight gap where it didnt close tightly. He put his finger there and opened it to that page. Ulp! Consider yourself warned: youd better not see it unless youve got the guts. Youll be sorry you did. (Evil laughter.) S.I. The words jumped out at him. Why did the book want to open to this exact page? He thought for a moment. Perhaps the four had opened the book here and set something heavy on top of it. The weight had created this force that remained even now, trying to open to this page. And maybe whatever theyd placed on top of the page was the it that hed better not see. That must be it.
Asakawa looked around anxiously, searching every corner of the shelf beneath the telephone stand. Nothing. Not even a pencil.
He sat back down on the sofa and continued reading. The next entry was dated Saturday, September 1st. But it said only the usual things. It didnt say if the group of students who had stayed here had seen it. None of the remaining pages mentioned it, either.
Asakawa closed the guest book and lit a cigarette. Youd better not see it unless youve got the guts. He imagined that it must be something frightening. He opened the notebook at random and pressed down on the page lightly. Whatever it was must have been heavy enough to overcome the pages tendency to close. One or two photos of ghosts, for example, wouldnt have done the trick. Maybe a weekly, or a hardcover book Anyway, something you look at. Maybe hed ask the manager if he remembered finding anything strange left in the cabin after the guests had checked out on August 30th. He wasnt sure if the manager would even remember, but he figured that if it had been strange enough he would. Asakawa began to get to his feet when the VCR in front of him caught his eye. The TV was still on, showing a famous actress chasing her husband around with a vacuum. A home appliance commercial.
Yeah, a VHS tape would be heavy enough to keep the notebook open, and they might have had one handy, too.
Still in a crouch, Asakawa ground out his cigarette. He recalled the video collection he had seen in the managers office. Maybe theyd happened to watch a particularly interesting horror flick, and thought theyd recommend it to the next guestshey, this ones cool, check it out. If thats all it was But wait. If that was it, why hadnt Shuichi Iwata used the name? If he wanted to tell somebody that, say, Friday the 13th was a great movie, wouldnt it have been easier just to say Friday the 13th was a great movie? He didnt need to go to all the trouble of actually leaving it on top of the notebook. So maybe it was something that didnt have a name, something they could only indicate with the word it.
Well? Worth checking out?
Well, he certainly didnt have anything to lose, not with no other clues presenting themselves. Besides, sitting around here thinking wasnt getting him anywhere. Asakawa left the cabin, climbed the stone steps and pushed open the office door.
Just as before, there was no sign of the manager at the counter, only the sound of the television coming from the back room. The guy had retired from his job in the city and decided to live out his years surrounded by Mother Nature, so hed taken a job as a manager at a resort, but the work turned out to be utterly boring, and now all he did every day was watch videos. Thats how Asakawa interpreted the managers situation. Before he had a chance to call the guy, though, he crawled to the doorway and stuck his head out. Asakawa spoke somewhat apologetically.
I thought Id maybe borrow a video after all.
The manager grinned happily. Go right ahead, whichever youd like. Theyre three hundred yen each.
Asakawa scanned the titles for scary-looking movies. The Legend of Hell House, The Exorcist, The Omen. He had seen them all in his student days. Nothing else? There had to be some he hadnt seen. He searched from one end of the shelves to the other, and saw nothing that looked likely. He started over, reading the titles of every one of the two hundred or so videos. And then, on the very bottom shelf, way over in the corner, he noticed a video without a case, fallen over on its side. All the other tapes were encased in jackets with photos and imposing logos, but this one lacked even a label.
Whats that there? After hed asked the question, Asakawa realized that hed used a pronoun, that, as he pointed to the tape. If it didnt have a name, what else was he supposed to call it?
The manager gave a bothered frown and replied, none too brightly, Huh? Then he picked up the tape. This? This isnt anything.
Hey, I wonder if this guy even knows whats on that tape.
Have you seen it? That one, asked Asakawa.
Let me see. The manager cocked his head repeatedly, as if he couldnt figure out what something like this was doing here.
If you dont mind, could I borrow that tape?
Instead of replying, the manager slapped his knee. Ah, I remember now. It was kicking around in one of the rooms. I just figured it was one of ours and brought it here, but
This wouldnt have happened to be in B-4, I dont suppose? Asakawa asked slowly, pressing the point home. The manager laughed and shook his head.